Blood Lines. Grace Monroe
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Название: Blood Lines
Автор: Grace Monroe
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007281817
isbn:
‘The one thing keeping me going recently was the thought that I could escape private practice and become a sheriff. Now, thanks to Bancho, that can’t happen. Before becoming a judge I have to sign an affidavit that there are no court actions outstanding against me. I can’t do that. Even if Bancho fails in hauling my arse into the High Court on some trumped-up murder charge, he has promised he’ll still do me with wasting police time.’
‘You don’t need to be a lawyer, Brodie. There are other ways to earn a living.’ Joe’s whisper entered my ear, curled all the way down the inside of my neck, into my chest, where it stopped my heart.
And, for the first time in years, I realised I wanted to do this job. I’d been kidding myself. I loved fighting with the Crown Office. I relished my small victories of holding on to someone’s liberty. Punters who had been given every opportunity in life and squandered them annoyed me. I was only too aware that I could have gone either way. Each time I looked into a client’s face and heard about their tragic background, I thought, there but for the grace of God go I … Luckily for me, I’d had Mary McLennan. It was the thought of her – the woman I still considered to be my real mother, even if she hadn’t carried me in her belly and brought me into the world – that kept me going through all of this.
The clock on the church tower in St Stephen’s Street interrupted my thoughts as it chimed eleven bells. The sky was bright and clear. Summer in Edinburgh was a gorgeous time. The birds made noises as they flew overhead. They circled slowly before roosting in the trees that lined the walkway by the Water of Leith. I should have expected it. But even as I felt the wet blob land on my head I didn’t want to acknowledge what had happened.
‘That’s lucky, you’re destined for greatness,’ said Joe, smiling as he took his clean white hankie to my hair. ‘You’ve got to read the signs, Brodie. Before I spoke to you this morning, I thought you had two choices: take your grandad’s advice and become a sheriff, or be hounded out of the profession.’
‘Has he been speaking to you as well?’
Joe nodded.
The old man was nothing if not thorough.
‘Kailash wants me to get out as well. I suppose I should listen to her – after all, she is my mother.’
‘Your mother is dead, Brodie. I will never consider that woman to be your mother.’
I wished he hadn’t said that because, although I denied it to Joe, when the cell door slammed shut on me I was crying for my mammy, and it wasn’t Kailash Coutts. Joe saying what he had just made me feel her loss even more, because he had adored her too. Mary McLennan fought for me and she would have taken on Duncan Bancho too. But, as Joe had brought home to me, she was dead.
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